


Caesura

by thebookofnights



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-26
Updated: 2013-10-26
Packaged: 2017-12-30 12:42:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1018760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebookofnights/pseuds/thebookofnights
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Directly following the unexpectedly bloody negotiations with Station Management, there are twenty-four hours in which he's running the entire station by himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Caesura

Directly following the unexpectedly bloody negotiations with Station Management, there are twenty-four hours in which he's running the entire station by himself.

 

With Chad gone into a quiet and swiftly-covered-up death at the hands of the Agency operatives on Flint Drive — a death that had almost been his, if only Management had seen fit to let him investigate something himself for once (and the only revenge available to him that of immediately _un_ covering the cover-up) — and Jerry Hartman taken up as a sacrifice, Cecil is alone for each of those hours.

He doesn’t cry. He’s beginning to suspect he’s forgotten how. He switches off all the lights. Locks all the doors. Listens to the voices coming indistinctly from Management’s office. Does not allow himself to be comforted by the fact that he can hear Jerry’s voice among them.

Not much, anyway.

He broods instead, sometimes in silence, sometimes in a fractured, furious monologue, thrown up at the void like a gauntlet as if it could hear him.

Someday it _will_ hear him.

He is the Voice and _he will make it hear him._

But not tonight, apparently.

 

“One day,” he pleads, pressed against the shadowed frame of the door. The mug sitting by his foot is full of a vile substance that might have come out as coffee, if only Cecil could figure out how to placate the ancient and cantankerous coffee machine in the break room. At the moment, he doesn’t care. “Just one day. I agreed, I agreed to all your conditions. Please, can’t we wait until Monday to bring someone else in? It’ll be easier for payroll... you won't have to process as much paperwork... fuck, listen, I’ll chant to you _myself,_ not just the recording, _me,_ all right? Please,” and he falls silent, not because he's run out of arguments, but because there still isn’t a proper honorific in the English language to address a being that has no inherent gender. He can't say _please, sir_ or _please, ma’am,_ and he _wants_ to be polite, still, despite his wounds, despite the profanities that keep slipping into his sentences through the raw spaces in his head.

It’s what his mother taught him, after all.

A moment, during which there is no response, not even the murmur of internal argument. Then an envelope slides out, slowly, nudging aside the cup of sludge. Cecil bends over to unfold it, thinking of origami stars and wondering, as usual, where the thought association comes from. Sighs harshly in relief at the revealed message:

_One Day._

 

He sleeps a little then.

Wakes to find the sun high and levers himself reluctantly out of his office chair, walks like an automaton into the men’s bathroom. He’s the only one here, for once.

Well, the only one except Khoshekh, curled on the nothingness above the sink, a peaceful ball of shadows. Hearing the echo of Cecil’s footsteps, he wakes, yawns, tiny pink mouth fringed with tiny fangs, and Cecil can’t help a smile.

“Hi,” he says softly.

The cat’s response is a sneeze and a blink. He noses Cecil’s outstretched hand, then settles into a purr as the radio host steps forward.

However Khoshekh got into his current strange situation, he ended up at exactly the right height to snuggle onto Cecil’s shoulder. It must be a coincidence, of course — the whole thing must be a coincidence, because whoever heard of destiny arranging a floating cat in a public bathroom? That would be weird.

But Khoshekh’s fur is as soft as darkness and Khoshekh’s paw is wrapped lightly around his neck, and he is comforted. If the Olden Faith is right, with its metaphor of the many-armed scale, then perhaps one grain of sand is weighing down his end at the moment.

Perhaps it is the little things, like being alive, being _able_ to receive comfort, that make the larger griefs separate again into their component parts.

He might be able to make a halfway decent opening line out of that.

 

**Author's Note:**

> This tiny fic is for you, readers of _[Partially Stars](http://archiveofourown.org/series/56913)_ , to tide you over while I go on hiatus to write my novel in November. I promise there will be more story when I get back. Oh, I almost forgot: if you want to cheer me on, [you can watch my progress here](http://nanowrimo.org/participants/thebookofnights).
> 
> (While this is from Cecil's perspective instead of Carlos's, yes, it is the same universe and the same series — just not an officially necessary part of the continuity.)


End file.
